My Story

FIGHTING
OBESITY

“CAUSES AND TRIGGERS FOR CHANGE”

Lost 82 lbs and 30 to go.

Being obese is not easy when it comes in the way of your daily life. But when you add sickness to obesity like hypertension (high blood pressure) and pre-diabetes, it becomes deadly. And then you become a father and suddenly realize the sky is falling because you are afraid that you won’t be there to see your child grow. My son changed everything for me.

I had been experimenting for a decade with various weight loss programs, diets, drugs but nothing worked in the long term. I would lose some and gain it back and more. But this time it was different. I decided to take a scientific approach. Being a person of science myself, I decided that it couldn’t be impossible to understand how our body works. I started reading medical journals, research papers, books they use in medical schools, nutrition experiments and white papers and realized it wasn’t me who was lazy to go gym or it wasn’t me who was gluttonous, and it wasn’t me to be blamed for my obesity. I was doing everything right, at least as per the accepted medical advice, eat small portions, include fruits and vegetables, eat low fat diet, exercise more but NOTHING was working.

So what was it?

Fortunately during my research I came across this book by Dr. Jason Fung. The book is called The Obesity Code. This book was very insightful and an eye opener. It wasn’t me, it was this crappy hormone called insulin. I decided to dig deeper and ended up reading The Text Book of Physiology by Guyton. And there it says – Fat loss doesn’t occur in the presence of insulin. It was obvious. Insulin is a fat storage hormone and that is how it regulates blood glucose and failure to do so results in Diabetes.

THE
CHANGE

“YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”

Sugar, carbs and hidden carbs are the killers. Eating carbohydrates causes insulin spike resulting in lowering of blood glucose then feeling hungry again and this eat hunger eat cycle goes on with a constantly elevated insulin levels. We keep converting what we eat to fat. That’s what our bodies are designed to do – store fat. But why do we store fat? We store fat so that we can use it to convert to energy when we don’t have food. So our body does expect to not get food for extended periods of time. Which means our bodies are designed to go through a cycle of feast and famine.

Well, in this modern age feast happens all the time without actually a famine. So we keep accumulating fat for the famine days which never comes.

Solution is to either create a famine state or to mimic a famine state. Creating a true famine state would be when you fast for extended periods of time. And mimicking famine would be when you starve your body of glucose which means no carbohydrates. But doesn’t our body need a certain amount of glucose to function, especially the brain? Yes it does and there is a process called gluconeogenesiswhich it makes its own glucose without an external source of carbohydrates and more on that some other day.

And that is exactly what I decided to do. Eat less carbs and replace it with fat and do intermittent fasting and extended fasting. So far I lost 82 lbs (37 kgs) of weight in 1.5 years.

I am not pre-diabetic anymore and I do not take any high blood pressure medication anymore. I actually do not take any medicine now. I had sleep apnea which I am cured of. I started to have arthritis which is gone now. I feel lighter, more energetic and more clear headed.

MY
MISSION

“HELP YOU MAKE BETTER CHOICES”

Someone told me once – nutrition doesn’t have to be perfect but it has to do with making right choices. So if you stuck with brown rice and white pasta on an island, which one would you pick?

I see so many people in my family and friends who I love are obese and I fear I will lose them soon. So I took it up as a mission to change their lives (just being selfish here) and soon without realizing I was helping a lot of strangers on instagram. I realized all what people needed was a little support and someone who empathize with their situation. Being an obese person myself, I understand their pain when they say that they can’t walk up to the bus stop.

My mission now is to help you make better nutritional choices and help you lose weight, lower your blood pressure and reverse diabetes. High blood pressure and diabetes today is the leading cause of deaths around the world but it doesn’t have to be that way. We have a very powerful tool to fight against those diseases – food.